The launch of XDefiant is defying players the ability to play the game. Sorry that sounded better in my head.
The release date of XDefiant has twisted and turned over many months, but finally it’s here, it’s fully launching and it’s…unplayable for many right now.
Players may be able to get into XDefiant and head to the playlist screen, but many are getting hit with an “Unable to Find Match” message despite many thousands of people clearly attempting to play. Ubisoft has now issued a statement about this at 1:30 PM, though problems are ongoing as I write this:
This is of course not terribly unusual given the state of online game launches in 2024, but it’s still frustrating for players who thought that perhaps all the advance alphas and betas and such might have prevented this.
There are 187,000 Twitch viewers for XDefiant right now, and everyone is just watching big and small streamers alike staring at the menus or error messages. Best case, messing around with loadouts with no unlocks or looking at the battle pass. It’s not how you want things to start off.
It has a been a long, long road for XDefiant, where one of those paths includes dropping “Tom Clancy’s” from the name. It was first announced in July 2021 as a shooter roping in different elements of Tom Clancy games from Ghost Recon to The Division. Eventually it became clear it was trying to go head-on after Call of Duty with gameplay inspired by the earlier years of that franchise. Originally, the game was going to be dropped in October, but was delayed over six months to today, and there has been more testing in that time. It already has a year-long roadmap coming with four seasons, including new weapons, maps and characters.
There is certainly a large amount of interest in the game, and I would certainly expect it to gain more traction than say, The Finals. But it needs to find its legs before we have any kind of real conversation about it challenging Call of Duty, as introducing new, live shooters into this market is nothing short of a feeding frenzy. Hopefully servers will be up soon and players will be able to make their own judgements now that full release day is finally here. I will post updates about the game’s status as they come in.
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